Newport Jazz Festival Immortalized

ENLARGE

Raven Films/The Kobal Collection

By

Peter Tonguette

July 1, 2013 4:49 p.m. ET

Not surprisingly, most obituaries about photographer
Bert Stern,
who died last Wednesday at the age of 83, prominently featured his acclaimed portraits of
Marilyn Monroe
.
Anyone who has seen those wispy, ethereal images of the actress—shot in 1962, just six weeks before her death—can recall them with ease. Easily overlooked in the rush to link Stern's legacy with Monroe's superstardom, however, is a unique artistic achievement, one sure to be as lasting as the Marilyn photos.

"Jazz on a Summer's Day," which premiered at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, is a documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Purporting to cover 24 hours, in fact the film is composed of material shot over a weekend (with some mood-enhancing shots of Long Island). The only feature film Stern would ever direct, its reputation has risen steadily since its debut, culminating in its inclusion in the Library of Congress's National Film Registry in 1999. The film's enduring popularity with jazz fans is surely due to the illustrious company of performers at Newport that year, among them Louis Armstrong,
Anita O'Day,
Gerry Mulligan and
Thelonious Monk.

But equally notable is the rich look of the film's beautiful cinematography. According to "The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film," Stern and his cameramen achieved this by using "color-saturated" Kodachrome stock. "Usually jazz films are all black-and-white, kind of depressing and in little downstairs nightclubs," Stern reflected in a 1999 interview. His use of color, he said, "brought jazz out into the sun." Indeed, almost any shot could be frozen and turned into one of Mr. Stern's classic photographs: O'Day primly cupping her gloved hands as she zips her way through a rendition of "Tea for Two," or Armstrong, illuminated by red stage lights, tilting his head upward as he plays "When the Saints Go Marching In."

But instead of focusing exclusively on the music-makers, Stern also trains his camera on serene Newport, pausing to look at its streets, playgrounds and beaches, as well as that year's America's Cup trials. Thanks to Stern's wandering eye, we have a palpable sense of time unfolding: A woman stretches her arms and pulls her red cardigan around her to combat the early-morning chill; later, a youngster, worn out from playing, optimistically tries to extract one last drop from his bottle of soda. It is quite a contrast to concert films that mostly present a series of shots of performers on stage.

So vividly does Stern capture the festival and its world that we regret not having been there ourselves. But Stern provided something that the actual festivalgoers could never have: A mirror. Critics have long observed that the director was, in the words of the New York Times'
Ben Ratliff,
"at least as interested in the crowd" as he was in the stars. Mr. Ratliff itemizes some of the more comical spectators the film records: "The poet
Gregory Corso
eats a cracker and wiggles the crumbs off his fingers; cherry-red lipstick and gingham shirts dot the screen; a bored girl glumly munches a popsicle; a sloshed young man clutching a paper cup pleads, 'Aw, c'mon, baby,' to his girlfriend."

These vignettes are certainly amusing, but Stern's tone here is admiring rather than mocking. His footage celebrates the enthusiasm of the man in a blue-checkered shirt, hunched over and clapping fervently to
Sonny Stitt
on the saxophone, and the eager young lady who fumbles with a tiny camera as she tries to film—Bert Stern-like—O'Day singing "Sweet Georgia Brown." There is much cigarette smoking here, but more than nicotine the audience seems addicted to what they are hearing. As the former Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum observed in his undated review, Stern is "very good at showing people listening."

At night, as the crowd keeps warm with cups of coffee, Armstrong makes his appearance, and "Jazz on a Summer's Day" seems to have reached its peak—what could top him doing "Tiger Rag"? But then the festival's emcee, "Voice of America" broadcaster
Willis Conover,
calls for quiet and announces: "Ladies and gentlemen, it is Sunday, and it is time for the world's greatest gospel singer, Miss Mahalia Jackson."

Jackson sings three songs, concluding with a sonorous performance of "The Lord's Prayer." As ever, Stern's crowd (and it is his crowd—along with editor
Aram Avakian,
he chose who to show and who to overlook) is in fine form. Previously giddy faces become solemn: A mother and daughter, seen joyously reacting to Jackson's "Didn't It Rain," lean their heads together with downcast eyes. A kind of Great Awakening in miniature seems to be sweeping through the audience in what amounts to one of the great religious moments in modern cinema. It is a measure of Stern's achievement that we are genuinely sorry when the title card appears over a shot of Jackson acknowledging the reverent applause—it reads, simply, "End of a Summer's Day."

Mr. Tonguette is writing a book on
Peter Bogdanovich
for the University Press of Kentucky. His criticism has appeared in The Weekly Standard, Sight & Sound, and Film Comment.

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